People in general and women in particular spend a good deal of time wearing cosmetic products. These products are sometimes colored with pigments or dyes or they may be uncolored. As important as the actual color of the product may be, if indeed it is colored, the ease of application, feel, coverage and wear characteristics are critical to maintaining customer acceptance. Therefore, while great strides have been made to improve various properties cosmetic properties, even incremental advances in the feel of a cosmetic product on the skin, particularly over long periods of time, can be very important to a product's success.
One class of products that has been introduced, particularly in foundations, eye shadows and blushes, are mousse or souffle type products. These products contain a relatively high degree of aeration and a light, creamy, almost spongy feel tactilely. However, not only is this category susceptible to improvement in terms of its feel, wear and coverage characteristics, but its manufacturing as well. A number of products are already on the market including Nina Ricci Mousse De Blush; Aube Mousse Cheeks; Ettusais Souffle Cheek Color; Estee Lauder Pure Color Cool Eye Mousse; Ayura Pearl Whipped Shadow; and Clarins White Plus Lightening Foundation with plant extracts.
Improvements can nonetheless be made, particularly in the processability of materials. When various mousse type formulations are produced without, for example, proper selection of the elastomers and the use of a structuring agent, it may be difficult to have them be both sufficiently pumpable and processable to fill containers and yet set up quickly enough and rigidly enough so that they do not take on undesirable shapes during set up, packaging and storage. Once the material is applied to the lumen of a container, it should fill the lumen completely and maintain the desired shape. Second, formulations based only on elastomers can exhibit variations, particularly in terms of their tactile sensation and spreading characteristics from batch to batch. Formulations that could solve these issues in terms of both cosmetic properties to the wearer and processing advantages are therefore highly desirable.